Ekta Kapoor, Saat Phere, and I

There has been enough debate about Balaji Telefilms produced soap operas being telecast on all major Indian channels at seemingly every hour of the day. While some swear on their lives to never watch them after having faced their brunt once, there is a whopping majority of Indian audience who are still keeping Ekta Kapoor, the creative brain behind Balaji Telefilms, in a massively profitable business.

Balaji Telefilms, like any other day time soap opera production company around the world, targets women audience. All its productions are based on a formula that Ekta Kapoor perfected through her first big success: Kyun ke saas bhi bahu thi. The same formula is now being aped by numerous other production houses in India to cater to an existing and ever-growing potential Indian women audience. Her formula mainly involves a few self-righteous women and a few scheming women with garish make up, all dressed up in the finest of saris and the best of jewellery, living in posh bungalows on their husbands' business incomes, with the evil ones plotting against the self-righteous ones and self-righteous ones praying to flower laden God statues for help. A point to remember, however, is despite their hectic lifestyles with all the thinking that goes into planning devious schemes and the worshipping of Gods that the rest have to maintain to protect their pure souls, none of them ever forget to fall on their respective husbands' feet when given a chance, and certainly do not forget to adorn their maangs (hair partition) with heaps of sindoor accompanied by a mangalsutra heavy enough to bow a neck. Well, bowed it should be. Or so Ekta Kapoor seems to imply. At least to me who got lucky to have the freedom to wriggle out of traditional bindings and symbols that make no rational sense to me.

I'll admit to having watched a few Balaji episodes on some lazy evenings in my high school years. Besides the physical implications (headache and seizure-like-sensations) from the dated visual effects repeatedly being used in the shows, they left a lingering desire in me to smash the TV even long after it was turned off. I found the melodrama incessantly boring and could not relate to anything. Not women's shedding of tears, not their sacrificial avatars, not their piousness in the Almighty God, not their servitude for their lovers ... nothing. It really made me wonder how any woman could lap all that nonsense up and how shows like these could sustain themselves. However, I left those thoughts as thoughts and never bothered with any Indian soaps again especially those that started with K.

A few years later, as I was dabbling with adulthood years, Saat Phere came into my life. It was supposed to be based on a dark-complexioned female character who no one wanted to marry because of her skin color. Having seen such cases in real life, I thought that I would be able to relate to this show after all. A few episodes in, it was still focused on developing characters and I gave it an ample chance to do so. As it proceeded, although maintaining an undercurrent of an unmarried girl being a burden, it did paint its lead character, Saloni, as a strong woman who eventually gets married to a Prince Charming errr a rich good looking businessman. Better sense should've prevailed at that point and I should've stopped watching the show at a high note, but the downward spiral had already begun and I was sucked deep into it. I began to care about Saloni and her husband's relationship, became happy when they were happy together, and sad when they split up. Long before I knew, I was watching it religiously every night. At that point, I tried giving some K-serials a chance as well. I started enjoying some of them too albeit occasionally ... until ... the day my consciousness woke up. I couldn't believe what I was doing. I was endorsing something that I'd always stood against. The life on screen was nothing close to the life I lived or wanted to live but it was the life that my parents would've wanted for me. My grandmother loved Saloni's character for her strong convictions towards God, her husband, and her family. Not that there is anything wrong with it, I am all for family and respect for family but something in me got disturbed enough for me to stop watching the shows altogether.

I couldn't help but ask the evergreen question about the relationship between media and society: was I getting influenced by media or was I influenced enough already through my upbringing to begin to relate to what Ekta and her colleagues showed me? Or was it that media and society were just feeding off each other? Daytime soaps (ex. Days of our Lives in US and Coronation Street in UK) are a reflection of their respective societies although exaggerated versions for the drama quotient. They are successful because they provide a healthy dose of voyeurism into a society that is very much like the viewers'. Did that mean Ekta Kapoor shows and other shows using the same formula as hers also depict the society they are meant for: the Indian society? Had I grown into one of these women characters since my teenage years when I despised them? I wondered then, and I still wonder. How could I accept seeing women characters being applauded for sacrificing their happiness and lives for the sake of others especially for purposes like saving a marriage? An institution which both a man and a woman are meant to uphold equally. Why did I not feel any anguish when I saw Saloni spending her days in a puja ghar (worship room) praying for her suhaag (marital bliss = husband) for without her suhaag, her life held no meaning? What had I become?

If I, who had a relatively liberal upbringing although in an Indian household, found and still find it tough to break free from the stronghold of the traditional thinking of being a woman instilled in me, how do I expect to change the mentality of a semi-literate 16 year old girl in rural Punjab who feeds on Ekta serials for entertainment? Both her parents and her only connection to the outer world - TV - show her the same thing. How is she to break the cycle without any inculcation of self-worth? How is she to accept that female gender is not inferior and deserves to live too? How is she to know that it is not normal to be aborting a girl child just like her neighbors, siblings, and cousins did? How is she to know that a woman can also choose a life for herself if her husband doesn't treat her well? She just doesn't know any better, and she never will ...

... unless there is a positive intervention by individuals who do know -somewhat- better. It could start with media.
Perhaps Ekta Kapoor.
Closely followed by Saat Phere.

Again, it's only an opinion. No personal grudge against Ekta Kapoor or her viewers.